William price abell



(No Model.) I

w. P. ABBLL; AUTOMATIC DEVICE FOR FEEDING MEGASS PURNAGES.

Patented July 3, 18,94.

WIZ/VESSi'S UNITED STATES I PATENT OFFICE- WILLIAMPRICE ABELL, orESSEQUEBO, BRITISH GUIANA.

AUTOMATIC DEVICE FOR FEEDING MEGA\SS-FURNACES.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 522,445, dated July3,1894.

Application filed \Tune25,l892. Serial No. 438,056. made.)

To all whom it mag] concern.-

Be it known that I, WILLIAM PRICE ABELL,

' Whitworth scholar and engineer, a subject of fixed hopper with'amovable or oscillating the Queen of Great Britain, and a resident ofTooley Park, Hinckley, Leicestershire, England, and temporarily residingat Essequebo, 1n the county of Essequebo, British Guiana, have inventedcertain new and useful Improvements in Automatic Feeding Devices forMegass-Furnaces, of, which the following is a full, clear, and exactspecification.

Hitherto, the practice of feeding megass (bagasse) furnaces with greenmegass has necessitated the attendance of one or more men at eachfurnace, these men requiring careful supervision to make them keep thefurnace full of megass and thus facilitate its more efficient work. Thishas been over come to a certain extent by building one large furnace andsupplying one or a series of boilers with heat from this one furnace.Now there are many difficulties and inconveniences resulting from thisstyle, besides the fact that the good practice of spares necessitateswork with a battery of boilers each with its own distinct furnace, sothat the failure of any one does not stop the factory. The usual methodof working hitherto has been to drop the megass from a carrier A to thefloor and from there regulating and pushing it by gearing, rolls, orlabor, into the furnaces, this being laborious and requiring muchattention.

Having given a brief account of the past condition of megass firing tofacilitate the description of my automatic feeding devices, I willproceed to describe my invention.

My object'is to reduce the labor on megass platforms as now used, byreplacing human firemen by automatic mechanical ones, and at the sametime feed the furnace in sucha way as tends to facilitate combustion.

Figure 1. is a sectionalelevation of a fixed chute connecting thecross-carrier direct with the furnace. Fig.2. is a modification of Fig.1.; and Fig. 3. is a sectional elevation of a back. V In Fig. 1., a. isthe ordinary carrier.

d. is the furnace, b. the hopper or chute connecting the carrier withthe furnace.

b is a door which can be opened when desired to clear the furnace orchute.

I). is a damper to assist in regulating the feed, should the megasschute be too steep; a

, part of the back of the chute 12 is made loose either to be taken awayor revolved into position 6 when it is desired to store a little megassbehind the furnace.

My invention, referring to Fig. 1. works automatically as follows:-Theinegass in its progress along the carrier arrives at an opening a andpart falls down the hopper b. which guides it into the furnace 01.; thiscontinues until the furnace is full, then the hopper as a naturalconsequence also fills and the opening 0. becomes blocked up with megassin such a way that the traveling megass in the carrier passes over andon to feed the next furnace: as soon as the megass isreduced by burningin the furnace, the deficiencyis made up by moremegass dropping down theopening at, the rate of combustion and consequently the feed of megassbeing regulated by suitable appropriate flue or boiler air-dampers, notnecessary to be shown,

as the present invention is limited to the feeding devices. I considerthe inclining of the chute important in facilitating-this automaticoperation, by preventing the jamming that would take place in thefurnace if a straight hopper were used: it will also be noticed bythosev'ersed in the art, that the hopper being always virtnallyfull ofmegass, no needless or un-wanted air can find its way into the furnacethrough the feeding mouth. In practice, I find the megass has anautomatic creeping advance motion from the time itenters the automatichopper, and that during the whole of its route along the carrier, andtill it enters into combustion, it is being gradually dried.

It will be observed that the set of furnaces connect with the travelingcross-carrier in such a way, that each furnace receives from' thecarrier a portion of the megass carried and delivered by it, and thatwhen a furnace is thus made full, the megass so delivered Having thusparticularly describecl my invention, what I claim isl. A chute orhopper inclined and oscillating as set forth and provided with a valve,

andwhercbywhen full of bagasse theweight of said bagasse shallautomatically close the entrance therefor from the carrier to thehopper.

2. In combination with a chute or hopper, having its interior area orpassage continuously larger from top to bottom, a movable 20 backforming part of the same, all substantially as set forth.

WILLIAM PRICE ABELL. Witnesses:

JOHN M. DAWSON, J AMES ROBERTSON.

